Hardware
Tablet Nice Touch
Wacom has rolled out the Cintiq 22HD touch, a new addition to its expanding interactive pen display portfolio, now featuring multi-touch. Combining multi-touch with Wacom’s pen technology, the new Cintiq 22HD touch offers an immersive on-screen experience and a more intuitive and natural way to work. Additional features include a 21.5-inch, full-HD display, an ergonomic rotating stand, and 16 customizable ExpressKeys. The Cintiq 22HD touch is priced at $2,499.
www.wacom.com
SOFTWARE
Rendering Cracking Code
Thinkbox Software has released Krakatoa SR, a stand-alone version of its high-volume particle renderer for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems that can be integrated with any 3D content creation application. CPU-based, highly optimized, and heavily multi-threaded, Krakatoa SR exposes both a Python-based interface and a C++ API to connect to various professional 3D applications. Krakatoa SR offers a point or voxel representation of particle data, with various filter modes, motion-blur, and depth-of-field camera effects, and HDRI render passes output to OpenEXR files. Krakatoa SR is priced at $495.
www.thinkboxsoftware.com
DCC Maxon/Adobe Pipeline
Maxon has revealed the first step in its strategic alliance with Adobe Systems, which is aimed at delivering a new level of integration between its 3D application Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects. The next release of Adobe’s software will include two Maxon technologies directly within the new Adobe After Effects: CineWare and Cinema 4D Lite. CineWare eliminates the intermediate renderings between applications by making Cinema 4D’s rendering engine available inside the new version of After Effects. Cinema 4D Lite, meanwhile, provides After Effects users a taste of the software’s workflow and tools.
www.maxon.com; www.adobe.com
Motion Capture Retargeter: About Face
Faceware Technologies has rolled out Retargeter 4.0, a major upgrade to its Faceware software. The new software’s key features, which include AutoSolve, Expression Sets, Tracking Visualization, Shared Pose Thumbnails, and Batch Processing, focus on automating more of the facial motion-capture process, as well as simplifying creative collaboration. Retargeter 4.0 is a lightweight plug-in to Autodesk’s Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, and MotionBuilder, and is part of Faceware’s Professional Product Line, a suite of facial mocap hardware and software. The plug-in is free and will work with current versions of Faceware Analyzer.
www.facewaretech.com